


Recovery

by Eustacia Vye (eustaciavye)



Category: Firefly
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-30
Updated: 2009-11-30
Packaged: 2017-10-06 23:35:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/58946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eustaciavye/pseuds/Eustacia%20Vye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I hear the things that people cannot say, will not say, would never say, and I feel the things they cannot bear to feel."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Recovery

**Author's Note:**

> For the LJ community "rayne_shippers"'s [ Fall Challenge.](http://community.livejournal.com/rayne_shippers/1252100.html) I took prompt #14 – Tree.

Haven was blasted and burned, but enough of the shell remained to be rebuilt. Following the end of their battle with the Operative, the Firefly named Serenity and her crew settled there to rebuild and perhaps heal a little. There were graves to dig, sermons to say, homes to rebuild in their friends' memories.

Though she was better, River could feel everything cut her like knives. She walked about, feeling the dust between her toes and the swish of the skirt on her filmy blue dress. It was the color of death and madness and hate to her, it was everything she had tried to run away from. The others didn't understand, and she stopped trying. They believed her when she said she was better, that her thoughts were clear and she was all her own. They wouldn't have wanted to know the truth, even though she could whisper it to Shepherd Book. "I hear the things that people cannot say, will not say, would never say, and I feel the things they cannot bear to feel."

He couldn't answer back. His ghost had long since departed, and she couldn't hear him anymore.

Jayne caught her staring at the plains beyond the settlement, at the dust and dirt and ramshackle fields that would slowly go back to wilderness without hands to tend it. "What're you doing, Crazy?" he called. He had been leery of her ever since the blast doors had opened and she had been standing amidst Reaver corpses. He had seen her behavior in the Maidenhead, known she was capable of more than cowering. The proof had been unsettling, and he had already found her more than a little odd.

She damaged his calm. That was all right. She damaged her own calm, too.

"I'm haunted by whispers," she told him, voice quiet in the approaching stillness of night. "I hear them all, all the things that can't be."

He eyed her warily still, but left her alone. There was rebuilding to do, even if there wasn't quite a purpose to it. The Operative had wiped their records clean, had deposited credits into their accounts. Maybe it was a bribe to get them to stop the signal, to have them silenced and keep the brewing unrest from exploding into another war. Jayne knew he hadn't signed on to protect River or keep her secrets. He had few ties and it was safer that way. No one got hurt if there were no ties, no attachments.

"There's no life here," River said sadly at dinner the next night. It was still, and everyone stared at her in something approaching horror. "All we have are ghosts."

Everyone avoided her after that.

River sat on the ground, beneath the twisted trunk of a tree that had been burned in the assault on Haven. There was no shade from the sun, no relief from the resentful eyes that turned to her. They wouldn't say it, couldn't say it. She could still hear it. _It's all your fault. This happened because of you, because we had to protect you._

She hadn't wanted it, hadn't asked for it. The secrets hadn't been her own, weren't hers to keep, and she didn't know how many more she had. Even if she could cut them out of her skin, there was nothing else she could give to prove how sorry she was.

Jayne towered over her, casting a shadow that covered her entire form. "What're you doin'?" he asked, suspicious of her blank eyes and loose hands.

"Contemplating time," River murmured. "Families."

"Yeah? How you doing with that?"

River looked up. "Families are important, aren't they?" Jayne nodded and rolled his eyes. "Parents are roots, children are trunks and branches. Parents wait for their children to bear fruit of their own, to reap their harvest and benefit from the time and efforts invested." River looked away from him, finding it too painful. "There is no harvest from my tree. There never will. Time will not erase this, will not reverse the damage done. I end here."

"Don't do that kind of _feng le_ talk," he told her harshly.

"What about your family tree?" River asked, looking up at him. "Is there someone looking out for your future there?"

There was a jumbled rush of thoughts there, something Jayne couldn't stop even if he wanted to. He couldn't help but feel responsible for his family, even if they were safe back home and far away from the black or Miranda or anything resembling danger. "Yeah," he said finally. "There is. Just like you got."

River shook her head. "I'm left behind. I've fallen into the cracks of things. It's all right, it's the way of things. I could never remain in paramount importance forever. It was nice for a time to be cherished, though. It was nice to feel needed."

Jayne felt a shiver roll down his spine. He knew he wasn't getting the message quite clearly, that he was missing all she meant to say. She didn't mean just one thing at a time the way he did; she spoke in layers, each moving at a faster speed than the one before it. It's what made her smarter than anyone else on the boat, and what helped make her so creepifying for him.

But her pain was real enough, her regret and sorrow and her need to be needed.

Jayne spent the next day looking for just the right thing. It wasn't just River that needed to be needed, he decided that night over dinner. Everyone else was sullen and lost, adrift without a purpose any longer. Well, maybe not the doc and Kaylee; they had a grand old time lost between themselves now that things were settled. And maybe if the others could have a sense of purpose the same way, they could start all over again.

After breakfast, Jayne began chopping down the blasted tree that had once been the glory of the central square. He ignored River's tears and Mal's shouting, Inara's helplessness and Zoe's stoic grief. The lovebirds were off somewhere, loving each other and missing the way things had gone while they weren't looking.

Covered in ash and bits of broken tree, Jayne went to the sapling he had scoured the fields for. It had been on the edge of the apple grove, in the shade of a much larger tree, and likely never would have grown as tall as it could have. "Hey, Crazy. Help me with this, will ya?"

She dug into the tree stump with a crowbar from the building efforts, reducing it to ash and splinters. Then she dug into the ground with her bare hands. Jayne brought out the sapling, and they nestled it into the hole River made. As they patted down the dirt and splinters, Jayne couldn't help but think it would make a fine addition to the square one day, when it was big and tall, leafy boughs spread to give shade and fruit.

River smiled at him, almost shyly. "There's hope, isn't there?"

"Got to be," Jayne replied, standing and brushing off his pants. "It's the only thing that keeps people going in the black, you know."

River stood up beside him, her smile growing wider. "Now I do." She watched as Jayne wandered off to answer to the others' confusion.

There might be a harvest from her branch of the family tree after all.

 

***


End file.
